Pale Moon: Release notes
v28.0.0 (2018-08-16)
We are excited to bring you Pale Moon 28.0. This is a new major
milestone in Pale Moon's release history.
We are now building on the Unified
XUL
Platform which has been forked off from Mozilla's mozilla-central
at a
point before Rust and Quantum to continue focus on the XUL interface
language and traditional browser extensions. Many thousands of things
have changed since the v27 (AKA "Tycho") versions, which can't possibly
all be listed here. Instead, the most pertinent improvements in this
new
release are highlighted here:
- SpiderMonkey update: The JavaScript engine has received a
major upgrade and now supports all landmark features from the
ECMAScript standards as carried by mainstream browsers. This should put
an end to the increasing JavaScript issues we've seen due to web
frameworks not being browser-agnostic in that respect, or the browser
not supporting what websites expect.
- Goanna update: The layout and rendering engine (Goanna) has
been updated to its 4th generation (version 4.*) which brings with it
improved compatibility with "trendy" CSS styling techniques that build
on a few very specific features (e.g. CSS Grid). Goanna continues to
build on tried-and-tested software fallbacks in case hardware
acceleration can't be used, and Linux remote desktop users can continue
to leverage xrender for speedy remote screen updates in Pale Moon.
- DOM enhancements: Enhancements in the Document Object Model
provides websites with updated APIs to perform their tasks. (e.g.
Fetch, WebAnimations, WebCrypto, HTML Input Element Extensions, etc.)
- Media enhancements: Our media back-end update is, for all
intents and purposes, complete. MSE media streaming (for MP4) should be
compatible with all major players on the market now. MSE for WebM is
still disabled by default due to some compatibility issues that need to
be examined, but you may enable this in preferences to e.g. allow 4k
video playback on some sites that only offer UHD in WebM format. We now
also support playback of FLAC-encoded audio.
- New: WebGL2 support! Pale Moon now supports the WebGL2
standard for enhanced graphical experiences in 2D and 3D.
- Devtools have been given a refresh. Just in case you
thought they weren't extensive enough yet, some new categories have
been
added to inspect and manipulate all aspects of web content.
- Updates to the login manager: Login credentials can now be
stored specifically with or without a user name, and selected
individually. This is a behavior change from previous, and clicking a
password field can now pop-up a selection list of user names for which
passwords are stored (if multiple credentials are saved). Clicking the
appropriate login name (or date-stamped version if no name is present)
will fill in the accompanying password.
- We no longer support Windows Vista.
What might be more important for people worrying about upgrading to
this milestone is what hasn't changed.
- We continue to support NPAPI plugins.
- We continue to support complete themes as well as
lightweight themes.
- We continue to offer a fully customizable interface like
before. Australis (like seen in Basilisk) is not used.
- We continue to support XUL overlay, bootstrapped and
(deprecated) Jetpack extensions (collectively called "legacy
extensions" by Mozilla).
- We do not include
any DRM in the browser (people needing this can use e.g. the
Silverlight plugin to play protected content), even though the platform
we build on supports it.
Our primary goal has been to lift Pale Moon up to the new platform and
as such most changes are "under the hood" and won't be seen in casual
use (aside from more things "just working"). We aim to keep your user
experience consistent and logical; but
some things will have changed, of course. Browser extensions may need
updating or may need a different version, for example.
Of course with such a big change of platform, there are some things
that have regressed (worked before but no longer work), and we will
work on fixing these regressions over time (hopefully with your help).
Reality check: Even though we have extensively tested the browser in
daily use for a few months (also thanks to the brave souls on our
unstable channel) we don't expect that the browser will be flawless or
bug-free. If you find bugs, regressions or issues with the new release,
please
discuss them on the forum. Let's work together as a community of users
to make this the best browser yet!
Big thank-yous and kudos go out
to everyone who has, in one way or another, contributed to this
milestone release and helped make it possible. This one belongs to all
of you!
Release notes for previous versions (unsupported)
You can find the release notes for previous releases of Pale Moon on
the Archived Versions Release
Notes page.
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